Robin & Julia’s Low Key, Personalized and Fun Washington, DC wedding

We knew we wanted to keep the wedding low-key. We also knew we wanted to get married in DC, where we live, and where marriage equality has been the law for several years now.

So that is where Robin & Julia started. Knowing they wanted to get married in a low-key, relaxed fashion, and having the wedding be in Washington, DC – their city and a place that has thankfully been a frontrunner in recognizing love for all. Thanks so much to Maggie Winters Photography for sharing this beautiful, DC wedding with us!

Robin & Julia’s Low Key, Personalized Washington DC Wedding at 701

We had the idea to get married at a restaurant, so our venue and catering would come hand-in-hand and we could count on the food being excellent. We looked for restaurants that offered private event space (on OpenTable of all places!) and came across 701. We’d had an excellent dinner there during Restaurant Week, and remembered the space as being really cool-looking inside. Once we realized they also had an outdoor patio on the Navy Memorial where we could have our ceremony, we were sold!

Going in, we quickly decided that some things — like photography — were important to us, but other things — like traditional wedding gowns — were not. We wound up changing our minds on some points, though. For example, we had felt strongly about being our own DJs through the magic of an iPod … but then we found out that 701 had a pianist who would play musical theater songs. But for the most part, deciding early in the process what we wanted to prioritize made it easier in the end to figure out how to use our budget and organize the day.

Click inside for so much more of Robin & Julia’s low key DC wedding!

And some things that seemed really important when we first started the planning process were total non-issues by the time the day rolled around. At one point, Robin (the one in the blue dress) felt really strongly about having flowers at the front of the ceremony area. (Julia — the one in the purple dress — did not care at all.) By the week before the wedding, Robin had forgotten all about those flowers and just wanted to make sure there was chocolate served at some point.

Of course, not everything happened according to plan. We forgot sash of Julia’s dress at home and Julia had to make a mad dash in a cab to pick it up the morning of the wedding (which was at 11:30am). Our ringbearers were early on their cue (the guests cracked up). We decided to have a mutual glass-stepping (since we didn’t have a groom), but Robin wore open-toed shoes and sliced her foot open. (A helpful cousin applied some Band-Aids.)

In the end, what mattered was that we had an awesome day with awesome people and wound up with awesome photos to remember it by!

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